


make a fool of death

by backgroundnpc (playingforkeeps)



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Idiots in Love, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, he doesn't die he just has to actually address things, taako talks about his feelings, the author does a hit on taako, the author regrets...everything and also nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-01 21:03:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15782070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/playingforkeeps/pseuds/backgroundnpc
Summary: If he really has to lose Kravitz, which he probably will, this might be the perfect way to do it. Give it a month, maybe two, and Kravitz will realize that Taako is fundamentally broken as a person, and it’ll be absolutely fucking fine. He probably couldn’t have scripted it better himself.Okay, great. That’s his out. All he has to do is bide his time and let the relationship run its course. The plan is, as far as he can tell, flawless.Except it’s not.





	1. Chapter One

“You’ll get bored of me, you know.”

He doesn’t mean to say it out loud. But mulberry wine is a zone of truth in and of itself—really, they could’ve replaced Merle with a cask of it years ago, if not for the fact that it’d be harder to make fun of than a dwarf—and the two-and-a-half bottles he’s downed are making his tongue loose. Makes all those thoughts he usually keeps quiet slither and slide out of his mouth before he can think twice about it.

In the blurred edges of his consciousness, he feels Kravitz fiddle with a few locks of his hair. “Sorry, babe?”

Taako opens his eyes. Somewhere between the second and eighth glasses, his head somehow found its way into Kravitz’s lap, but he isn’t complaining. “You know. Eventually, I won’t be interesting anymore. It’s okay, though. Everybody does it.”

Kravitz’s upside-down brow furrows. “Taako, babe, you’re a lot of things, but I don’t think you’ve ever been boring.”

“No, bonehead, you don’t get it.” One of Taako’s hands makes a nebulous gesture of its own accord, and a curtain across the room billows in a sudden gust of wind. “It’s just a fuckin’ inevitability, yeah? Like, people move on from me, and it’s super-chill a-okay, broheim. Consider this your advance warning.”

He cranes his neck back, trying to land a clumsy kiss on the inside of Kravitz’s wrist, but Kravitz pulls his arm away, pushing Taako’s haphazard curls off his forehead. A little crease has formed, right in the center of his forehead, as his brows pull further in. It looks odd against the smooth of his skin. _He should steam it out along with his suits,_ Taako muses hazily, and stifles a giggle at the thought of his boyfriend starching his temples. Maybe if he left an iron in the bathroom?

But Kravitz’s mouth is off-kilter in a way that Taako hasn’t seen before, one it definitely shouldn’t be at. He looks upset, Taako realizes with a befuddled start. He’s also talking, and it takes a second or two to process the words.

“I don’t—” Kravitz sounds uncertain. Uncertain is bad. Uncertain means that the leaving might come sooner than Taako wants, and when he realizes that, all the fear that had been swirling his brain drops into a heavy clump at the bottom of his stomach. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I’m not just gonna leave you for no reason, Taako, you’re… I mean, you’ve got to know I’m serious about you, right?”

When Taako won’t look him in the eye, Kravitz cups one of his cheeks with his hand, tracing lazily over his freckles. “Hey. I came back for you, remember?”

The wrinkle hasn’t left Kravitz’s forehead. Taako finds himself fighting the urge to reach up and smooth it out with his fingers. He settles instead for twisting a bead on one of Kravitz’s locs, a delicately wrought silver one reminiscent of two snakes fucking. “Kravitz. You’re not listening to me. Taako’s… he’s… I’m the cheese, you feel me?”

And now he’s lost Kravitz altogether. “You’re the _what?_ ”

“I’m…” How many drinks has he had? Not nearly enough to be this gone. “It’s that song. You know, the kid’s one with a dude and his wife in the place? And they’re taking, like, a dog and a cat somewhere, and they have a threesome with a nurse. Help me out here.”

“I have no idea what you’re saying.”

Impatient, he clicks his fingers in front of the reaper’s bewildered face. “You know this! The, um, dude. In the place. Fantasy Google it. The chorus is like, hi, ho, derry-something?”

Either Kravitz is shaking his head in disbelief, or Taako is starting to doze off. “Do you mean… are you talking about the farmer in the dell?”

“Exactly! Thanks, that was gonna bug me.” They’re back on track now. “They do all the stuff, and the blah-blah-blah, and where’s that good good cheddar at the end of the song?”

“It’s—”

Taako cuts him off. “The cheese. Stands. Alone. And that’s, uh, me. ‘Cha boy’s the cheese. Alone.” He taps Kravitz on the nose. “It’s all good, my dude. Shit, I even thought that was why—”

He catches himself there, because what he was _about_ to say was that he though Lup left because Taako wasn’t interesting anymore, and he can’t open that particular door because boy howdy, there is some rough stuff back there. Nope. No siree. Not today.

Kravitz drags him out of his repression tangent. “Taako? Why what?”

With probably more effort than it should take, Taako drifts back to reality. If he focuses, he can see his boyfriend’s face. It’s a good face, he thinks fondly, even when it’s all creased up like this. “You have…so much anxiety. What do you do with it? You can’t even _die_ , Krav. There’s no _point_.” He reaches up to pat Kravitz awkwardly and a little too hard on the cheek. “Listen, just be fucking present, you know? There’s a whole entire moment you’re missing out on. It’d solve everything for you.”

Like how if Kravitz were a little more moment-focused, Taako wouldn’t have a panic attack every time he started talking long-term.

Kravitz’s lips press together for a second, almost a laugh. “Unfortunately, once you get rid of the stress of mortality, there’s more time to be stressed about everything else. You’re changing the subject, love. Are you alright?”

“It’s fine.” Gods, but this is boring. They could be sleeping right now, or fucking, or have finished one and started the other, and instead he’s over here having a commitment crisis. In lieu of continuing the conversation, he reaches up and whines, “I’m too tired to walk to bed. Carry me.”

Luckily, Kravitz doesn’t push the point any further. Instead, he wiggles his arm under Taako’s legs and scoops him up, pressing a quick kiss to his forehead. “Alright, c’mon,” he murmurs. “Let’s get you home.”

In the five or so minutes it takes for Kravitz to carry him back to the dorm, Taako drifts in and out of half-dreams. The world passes by with its corners sanded off, and he only catches bits: the soft vibration of Kravitz’s chest as he hums a lullaby, the moon throwing quicksilver off his cheekbones. When they get back to his room, he thinks Kravitz asks, “Magnus? Can you get the door? I’ve got precious cargo here.”

He definitely hears a whisper of “Love you” as Kravitz tucks him in, but he pretends to be asleep for that part.

One more conscious thought hits him just before he drifts off completely, and it does so with a sudden, vague jolt: wine or no wine, he wasn’t entirely truthful with Kravitz. The fact that people get bored of him, he’d meant. And the fact that people leave. That’s the way it’s always been.

 _It’s okay_ , though? That had been a lie.

 

 

One of the nicer things about being a semi-immortal being, especially one with a long lifespan to begin with, is that your hangover threshold is pretty high. The less fortunate part of that is that you tend to remember everything from the night before. When Taako wakes up, the memory of the spill-your-guts conversation fresh in his mind, he immediately presses his face into a pillow and shrieks with embarrassment. How could he say something like that? And to Kravitz? Gods, he’s such a fucking idiot.

It’s two in the morning—thanks, drunk-sleep—so, obviously, it’s the perfect time to call Lup. She picks up almost the second he’s finished attuning her frequency. “Hey, loser. What’s good?”

In the background, he hears sizzling and the banging of dishes. She must be cooking something. Lup only late-night-cooks when Barry’s asleep, and for that he sends a quick thank-you to Istus. Taako can deal with a lot right now, but Barry giving blundering, albeit sweet, relationship advice isn’t one of them. “I need twin time. Ran into a bit of a problem.”

“Uh-huh.” For a moment, the line is overtaken with a series of rapid-fire clinks that he realizes is Lup whisking something.

 _Bite the bullet, Taako_. “It’s Kravitz.”

The clinking goes dead quiet, and suddenly, her voice comes through like cyanide. “What the fuck did he do?”

“Lup.”

"I don’t care if he’s my boss. If he hurt you, I will kick his ass from here to the next fucking star system."

" _Lup_ , he just—"

“No! You don’t get to defend him here! If Ghost Rider wants to mess with you, he’s gotta mess with—”

“ _Lup!_ ”

She stops short, a little breathless. “What?”

“He said he loved me.”

Whatever reaction he expected, Lup is suspiciously silent. Taako’s about to hang up and check their connection when she whoops so loudly he has to hold the stone at arm’s length to avoid going deaf. “ _Hell_ yes! Tell me everything, Ko. What were you doing? Was it out of the blue, or did you say it first? How’d you respond?” She gasps. “Oh, were you wearing the fantasy Chanel boots?”

“I didn’t say it back.”

Record scratch. “You fucking what?”

With one finger, he traces over the faintly glowing symbols on his stone. He doesn’t want to tell Lup exactly what’s going on, but lying probably isn’t the right move either. “Look, I didn’t want to say it if I wasn’t sure I meant it.” Half-truth, alright. “You and Barry are a functional couple or whatever, so I wanted to call and ask.”

“O-kay.” Back on the Starblaster, Lup always used to sit the same way when she used one of their comm devices, sprawled on her stomach and picking at nonexistent split ends with her free hand. Taako doesn’t know exactly how her form works in the astral plane, but he conjures up the image anyway, and it makes him smile. “Ask me…?”

“How you knew. You and Barry.” He waves nebulously, even though she can’t see him. This feels ridiculous to even say out loud. “That it was forever.”

As soon as it’s out there, he regrets saying it. Really, forever? Sentimental bullshit much? At best, he and Kravitz probably have three months left, and that’s provided the world doesn’t end again.

“Koko.” Lup’s voice sings of the shit-eating grin that’s probably curling across her face. “Are you thinking about _forever_ now?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth.”

“You _are!_ ” Fuck, she sounds delighted. “My baby brother’s all grown up!”

“Okay, hold up.” Technically, he’s six minutes younger, but he won’t let her call him a grown-up by any means. “I resent that—”

Lup cuts him off. Gods’ sake, she’s actually starting to giggle. “No, shut the fuck up. We’re going to find Barry and talk about forever things. Oh, shit, this is too good.”

Taako rolls back onto his stomach and presses his face into a pillow. “I’m dead and in hell,” he mumbles, even though she probably can’t hear him.

On the other end of the call, he can hear the stone of farspeech thunk against something, followed by the sound of shattering glass. Taako snickers as he hears his sister curse. What can she possibly break in the astral plane? Another, heavier thwack, and then Lup, faintly: “Barry. Barry. _Barry_. Babe, wake up, Taako has a question.”

Barry’s voice, groggy with sleep and even more muffled, mumbles something. Lup sighs frustratedly. “ _No_ , it’s not another vampire argument. This is important. How’d you fall in love with me?”

He hears another, longer mumble, and then a crackle as Lup shifts the stone of farspeech back to her mouth. “He says we went on a hundred-year journey through space and time, learned each other’s souls, and fell slowly and and passionately in love over the course of half a century.” Short mumble. “Oh, and he saw my ass in booty shorts. Does any of that help?”

“Not even remotely.”

“Really? Even the booty shorts?”

“Don’t you think I haven’t tried that already?”

“You’re so right. Sounds like you’re shit outta luck, kemosabe.” Lup pauses in thought, and from the background, he can hear Barry mumble again. “Barry says you should talk to him. Have a, uh—what was that, babe?—oh, an open and and honest dialogue about your issues with long-term commitment so you can work through them as a couple.”

He sighs melodramatically and speaks up a little for Barry’s benefit. “Hey, Barrold?”

Barry grunts and the stone crackles again, and suddenly he comes through much clearer, if no less exhausted. “What’s up, Taako?”

“You might actually have a point.”

“Really?” All the tiredness drains out of Barry’s voice. “How so?”

Taako sprawls back on his mattress, staring aimlessly at the glow-in-the-dark stars Angus stuck to his ceiling. Little shit even took the time to form the constellations they can see from the quad. “That’s, uh, whatchamacallit—healthy, right? It might do me some good to talk about my issues and not, y’know, repress them.”

He can practically hear Barry beaming from three dimensions away. “Taako, that’s a huge step. I’m really proud of you for thinking like that. Communication is absolutely key to a, uh, healthy relationship.” Barry prattles on for a bit about coping and active listening as Taako _mm_ s and _ahh_ s appreciatively at the right moments. All that time in the cave must’ve given him a little too much time to read self-help books. It’s all Taako can do not to giggle at his therapist voice.

“Uh-huh, yeah. You think I should talk about my hangups with him? Maybe get into my childhood a little?”

“I mean, if you’re comfortable having that kind of intimacy, then—” Barry cuts off as Lup squeaks. “Hon?”

Lup says nothing. Neither does Taako. After a moment, Barry sighs. “You’re both fucking with me, aren’t you?”

They both hold the silence a second longer before Lup snorts again, and both of them dissolve into helpless cackles. “Gods, Barry,” Lup wheezes, “it’s like you haven’t even _met_ us.” She turns her voice back to the stone, ignoring Barry’s faint protests in the background. “Try the booty shorts again.”

“Roger that, bubelah,” Taako replies, and hangs up before he can say something he’ll regret.

 

 

It’s the second time Kravitz drops the l-word that Taako knows it’s definitely going to end. This time, it’s not in the middle of a battle, just wandering around the Bureau’s campus looking for a decent picnic spot. Halfway through Taako’s impassioned—-and justified—rant on how utterly terrible the controlled climate is for making ceviche, Kravitz reaches up quickly to adjust his hat for him. Taako trails off midsentence as Kravitz’s hand drops to briefly caress his cheek, and when he looks up, the reaper’s eyes are soft.

“Gods, I love you.”

At Taako’s stunned expression, he falters for half a second, slapping a smile back onto his face. “Anyway, you were saying. Ceviche?”

“Yeah,” Funny, but it’s suddenly hard for Taako to talk with his heart in his mouth. “Needs more breeze and a little humidity before it’s really good. It’s, uh…” He looks both ways for an escape and, finding nothing, blurts, “It’s probably not doing super well now. I’m gonna throw it on ice for a bit but, um, catch ya later, my dude.”

Whatever Kravitz starts to say is cut off as Taako stumbles back, gives a vague wave, and Blinks away.

He’s already back in his room before he realizes he left the picnic basket on the ground.

It takes embarrassingly long to get his bearings, and even longer to get his balance back. Gods, but he’s being unbelievably stupid about this whole thing. Of course Kravitz loves him. He’s Taako, from TV. He practically collects it. Magnus has his robot arms, and Merle has his beachcomber shit, and Taako has the love and attention of millions of fans. Not that he really returns it that much, but that’s to be expected. As far as he’s concerned, love is reserved for Lup, the Starblaster crew, Angus, and, on a good day, Klarg. Everyone else, frankly, can get fucked.

Which would be a perfectly easy philosophy, if he didn’t just plain like Kravitz. Kravitz, the least convenient being in the planar system to be into, save maybe Merle. And it’s not like Taako hasn’t tried to get over him. Boy howdy, he thinks, grimacing, he has fucking tried. And Kravitz has kept getting in the way.

Fuck, though, what is it about Kravitz that has him so hooked? Can’t just be that he’s hot—even though it is a perk—or that he’s powerful, which, again, see above. Or that, admittedly, the idea of taking “fuck death” literally is pretty on-brand for him. He could deal with all that. It’s _more_.

It’s Kravitz’s dumb work accent that he drops the second he sees Taako. It’s his weird compulsion to explain the minutiae of soul collection bureaucracy, even when nobody’s listening, or the featherlike kisses he’ll drop on Taako’s head whenever he passes behind him. It’s that Kravitz is a ball of anxiety and formality, but Taako made him full-body-laugh for the first time last week, and the unexpected warmth he felt made a nearby fountain spontaneously turn to champagne.

It’s that, maybe for the first time since Sizzle It Up went down, Taako has something he’s maybe actually scared of losing.

Bracing himself against the door, Taako takes a long, slow breath and tries to sort through the maelstrom in his head. If he really has to lose Kravitz, which he probably will, this might be the perfect way to do it. Give it a month, maybe two, and Kravitz will realize that Taako is probably fundamentally broken as a person, and it’ll be a-okay-coolio-beans. It’ll be fucking fine. He probably couldn’t have scripted it better himself.

Okay, great. That’s his out. He takes another breath and nods to himself, glad to be rid of the problem for the moment. All he has to do is bide his time and let the relationship run its course. The plan is as low effort as they come and, as far as he can tell, flawless.

Except it’s not.

Glaringly obvious flaw number one: Kravitz is far too polite to break up with him just because he starts to notice the cracks in the façade. Dude would probably rather take Legion to the opera than have the “it’s not you, it’s me” talk, and that means no easy end.

Glaringly obvious flaw number two, and this one’s a little harder to admit: Taako might not be able to handle being left alone right now.

He isn’t _lonely_. Not technically. Like, he has people, but lately Lup’s been too busy with her job to do dinner more than once or twice a week, and what with Magnus’s dog-training school, Ango’s new scholarship, and Merle’s “I’m gonna make up for being a shitty dad” kick, things have been quiet. Taako doesn’t do quiet too great. It makes the buzzing in his head overwhelming, and he always needs to find something to do to tamp it down. A new spell class, maybe, or a crazy impromptu adventure.

Once, he’d taken on a culinary assistant.

No. Nope. No. Taako’s not opening that door tonight, or maybe ever. He needs to focus on the plan. Waiting for Kravitz to get sick of him obviously isn’t going to work; either the waiting will drive him insane or he’ll end up dragging it out longer than he needs to.

New plan, then. If Kravitz won’t end this thing, Taako can. Maybe he’s never actually technically broken up with someone to their face before—disappearing after three or four dates is much more his style—but it can’t be that hard. All he has to do is look Kravitz in the eye and tell him _sorry, but I don’t love you back._

This is going to be fine.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Well, you know, Barrold and I rolled up a little early, we’re shooting the shit with a couple other reapers, and then Kravitz shows up. You remember Kravitz, right?”
> 
> She doesn’t wait for an answer. “And I ask him how he’s doing, and he says, _Lup, I think you should know that your brother and I have made the decision to terminate our relationship_.”
> 
> He swallows hard. Shit, of course Lup would hear about it from Kravitz. He'd completely forgotten to tell her. “Oh, yeah, I meant to—”
> 
> “And I’m like, _that’s news to me, I thought you guys were really into each other_ , and he goes, _I guess things change_ , so I guess what I’m really getting at here, Taako, what my _real_ question is, is what in Istus’s name possessed you to _break my fucking boss?_ ”
> 
>  
> 
> Content warning: this chapter contains a lot of references to depression/un-dealt-with issues, and one character has what could be interpreted as a manic episode. If you want to skip that part, it starts at "On the fifth day" and ends at "When it's over, he surveys".

Taako places the call the next evening, right around a time he knows Kravitz is free. Normally, he wouldn’t worry about pointless things like “convenience” or “timing”, but this particular situation might involve a little more finesse than he originally thought.

That's alright, though, 'cause Taako's got it all worked out. There’s the chance for a graceful exit here, provided he can get Kravitz alone for a simple conversation and let him down easy. Then maybe he can get things back to normal.

Unfortunately, the “graceful exit” solution hinges on him not being a) a bit of a masochist, and b), hedonistic as fuck.

Taako gets as far as “get Kravitz alone”, asking him to cut a portal into one of the Bureau’s spare dorm rooms. Kravitz is still skulled out when he steps in, but as his human form knits slowly over his face, there’s an almost unbearably open happiness to it. “Hey, babe,” he begins, and Taako’s stomach drops eight floors. “Wait, this isn’t your room, is it?”

“Spare room. Merle needed the dorm,” Taako lies. “I think he’s got a new ficus over.”

Kravitz pulls a face. “Ugh.”

(Actually, Merle’s spending the day at Mookie’s dance recital, and Taako feels a little dirty for that particular lie. But he isn’t going to dwell on it any longer than he has to.)

“But anyway.” Kravitz’s hair is down today, and he tugs nervously on a loc when he talks. “You said there was something you wanted to talk about?”

According to the plan, this was where the break itself was supposed to happen. Taako thought out what he was going to say, even wrote it out a few times to make sure he got the wording right. He’s got the index cards back in his room, if it’s not too late to go get them.

And then Kravitz shrugs off his cloak and Taako catches a glimpse of his throat, all the soft dark skin peeking out from his collar that makes his fingers twitch with _want_ ,

And really, if this has to end, it’s only fair that he should get the full experience. For posterity.

That’s how he’ll justify it later, at least. Whatever’s powering the impulse, the result is the same: he takes a step back, braces himself, and catapults his body directly into Kravitz’s arms.

He has the element of surprise, or at least enough that Kravitz stumbles back into the wall on impact, but his hands go instinctively to Taako’s thighs as they wrap around his waist. “Taako, babe,” he gets out, half-laughing, “I thought you just wanted to talk?”

Talking was part of the plan when there was a plan. Unfortunately, the plan, as it were, goes out the window the second Kravitz discovers the stockings he’s wearing under his skirt. He gasps raggedly into Taako’s ear, and Taako, who seconds earlier was busy leaving a mark on Kravitz’s neck that none of his suits could hide, drinks it in. The kiss is fast and breathless and fucking _filthy_ , leaves Taako’s pulse racing when Kravitz pulls back to try again. “Taako, you have to tell me what you want—”

“Everything.” Taako cuts him off. “Anything.” He ducks his head again to bite down on Kravitz’s pulse point, feeling fingers tighten on his legs, and Kravitz actually _hisses_. Oh, yeah. Plan is off the table.

Still talking, he moves further down, doing his best to wreck the exposed skin there. “Wherever your head’s at, Krav—” licking along his collarbone—“I’m there with you, come on—” his free hand, twisting into Kravitz’s hair and pulling his head back—“just tell me.”

He’s reaching down to undo his first button on his shirt when Kravitz catches his hand and kisses the palm. Even with his pupils blown so wide Taako can see himself in them, there’s still that _goddamn_ happiness there, and it’s practically dripping from his words. “You. That’s all I want.”

 _For now_. Taako smirks at him. “You sure you can handle it, bone daddy?”

They both know Kravitz hates the nickname. It doesn’t seem to matter right now. He can feel the muscles in Kravitz’s stomach jump as Taako digs his nails lightly into his bicep. “Is that a challenge?”

“It’s whatever you want it to be.”

Kravitz looks like Taako just handed him the world on a plate. His smile spreads all crooked and goofy across his face, the kind where you know you look ridiculous and you’re too gone to care, and _gods_ , Taako loves him so _fucking_ much, and that’s why this has to end.

But not now. Not yet. He kisses Kravitz with all the unfettered desperation he can’t say out loud, pushes down on the growing emptiness behind his ribs.

 

The note, like the rest of the plan, is perfect. Nine words, and just succinct enough so as to be impersonal, but not cruel: _I think we should end things. No offense. Taako._ He pretends to be asleep until Kravitz’s breathing evens out and slides out of bed to dig through the pockets of his robe to find it. Provided the spell goes right, the parchment will appear in Kravitz’s pocket in a few hours, which means he’ll be able to get through his workday without the distraction, and Taako will have a day to tell Lup so it doesn’t come up between them.

The note crinkles a tiny bit as he slips it into Kravitz’s pocket and whispers the incantation, and for just a moment, the reaper stirs in bed. Taako’s heart skips a beat, wondering if he’ll have to do this face to face after all, but Kravitz mumbles something and rolls over again without waking. Perfect.

On his way out, Taako looks down to find the reaper’s robe draped around his shoulders. He vaguely remembers picking it up when he got out of bed, but not actually putting it on. But it’s warm, and it smells nice, so he doesn’t bother putting it back before he closes the door.

No sound in the hallway but the faint hum of air filters, and suddenly, all that churning hurt in Taako’s stomach is just gone. His pulse isn’t racing. His eyes aren’t stinging. More than anything, he just feels hollow.

 

 

It didn’t, of course. Help. But then, he always knew it wouldn’t.

Whatever had driven the impulse to jump Kravitz like that, Taako’s only real goal had been to experience it, and he did. In vivid detail. Enough to write a goddamn thesis on the subject, if he so desired. He knows what it’s like to have Kravitz whisper his name reverently, like he could make the world around them disappear if he could. And the hitch of his breath when Taako bites his neck, and the grounding way his hands steady Taako’s hips, bring him back to his body and the places theirs meet.

Who else can say they’ve had someone who works for a goddess hold them like it’s a religious experience?

Taako can, and it fucking _sucks._

When he checks his stone of farspeech, it blinks with unheard messages. One from Angus, which asks him nervously why he wasn’t at magic lessons yesterday before reassuring him that _it’s quite alright, sir, I practiced my Astral Eye, I’d love to show you when you have time_. One from Davenport, who’s been trying with no avail to get him to talk to Lucretia. Cap’nport can fucking stick it if he thinks Taako’s going anywhere near that bitch, but he makes a mental note to call Ango back at some point. Kid’s making some real progress.

The others are from Kravitz. Four in total. A lead weight drops into his stomach as he reads the timestamps: three early in the day, all spaced an hour or so apart, and one singular one, right around the time Kravitz would have gotten the note.

He could always just not listen to them, right? It’d suck, yeah, but then he wouldn’t have to hear Kravitz. All it would take is enough impulse control not to play the first one right now.

Impulse control? Never heard of her. He hits play.

“Hey, love.” Kravitz’s voice on the stone, still sleep-roughened makes Taako gasp before he can catch himself. “You weren’t here when I woke up. I’m assuming it was business, but just give me a call when you can, yeah? I’d love to hear your voice.” A vague, indistinguishable noise that might be a yawn. “Oh, and I think you might’ve taken my cloak. I’ll be needing that back eventually. Love you.”

The stone gives a _pop!_ that indicates the message is over, and the next one, marked a few hours later, begins. “I almost got demerited at work for not having my cloak. I didn't even know that could happen. Am I ever going to get it back, or is it just yours now?”

The third, more nervous: “Taako? I’m sorry, I feel weird calling you over and over like this. I’m just a little concerned. Give me a call when you get this, yeah?”

“Taako.” The fourth and final message, his name comes out on a heavy sigh that sends a jolt down Taako’s spine. “I got your note.”

Taako pauses it. Kravitz doesn’t sound sad, or even devastated; he just sounds exhausted, and Taako might not be able to deal with that right now. Hands shaking, he mentally scrolls through his options, all of which seem equally horrible.

Case one: Taako plays the message, knows how much he hurt Kravitz with the breakup, and is haunted by that forever. But he’s haunted by a lot of things forever, so it’s really just one more drop in the bucket.

Case two: Taako never plays the message, it stays on his stone, and he never has to deal with Kravitz again. And he’s haunted by it forever.

Case three: Taako deletes the message, never hears the last words Kravitz will ever say to him, and is haunted by it forever.

The message restarts when he hits play. “Taako. I got your note.” One deep, shaky breath, even though Kravitz doesn’t need to breathe. “Look, I don’t know what I did, and whatever it was, I’m so, _so_ sorry. But Taako—” and for a second, Taako thinks Kravitz is get angry with him, and wouldn’t that be a fucking _blessing_ , to brush this off as another crazy ex, but no such luck—“you know how I feel about you. I respect you, and I respect what you want.”

Fuck. He hears Kravitz swallow, and when he continues, the hitch in his voice makes Taako’s own throat threaten to close. “You’re extraordinary, Taako, and I’m glad you were a part of my life. You deserve everything.”

For a second, the message holds out, as if Kravitz is going to say something more, but the stone sends out its usual cheerful _pop!_ before displaying a note to tell him he has no more messages, and does he want to edit or clear his inbox? Or does he want to bury a necromancer’s dagger between his ribs, which might hurt a little less?

Unconsciously, he tightens his grip on the stone of farspeech, as if by squeezing it hard enough he can will Kravitz here and make it all better. Part of him would be more than up for it, too. Get Kravitz alone again, replay those snippets running on loop through his brain—Kravitz’s breathy exhale of a laugh as Taako pushed his waistcoat over his arms, his skin warming as they found each other’s rhythms, how he kissed like the world was still ending and it was all they could have—

And it was. All, that is. Gone and done and dead as anything. He puts the stone away.

 

 

Elves don’t really need to sleep, but Taako catches himself passing out for long stretches of time during the day and waking with Kravitz’s cloak wrapped around him. For the first day or two, it smells so strongly of Kravitz that he’s torn between burying himself in it and throwing it out the window, but it’s mostly faded by the third day. If he still presses his face hard enough into it, though, he can just catch a whiff of cloves and ginger.

Kravitz bought that cologne because Taako mentioned offhand that it smelled like Candlenights.

Aside from that and the occasional twinge in his stomach, though, he’s not sad. Not exactly—more like restless, like there’s an itching, crawling mass trapped just behind his eyes that he can’t shake loose. It blocks off almost everything else, gives him three inches of static between him and everything else in the world. In the few hours he can get out of bed, he stands under the shower until the water runs cold before trudging back to the dark.

Day four, when his body won’t let him sleep anymore, he decides to go out instead. He considers throwing on a Disguise Self for a moment—saving not only this world but all world has its perks, but it sure as fuck doesn’t earn you any privacy—but decides against it last minute. If he has to deal with shitty cocktails and electrobards just to go dancing, might as well get some free drinks out of it.

First, dress for battle. Gold top. Leather shorts. His very highest heels (used to be Lup’s, got repurposed around cycle forty-one, and they always looked better on him anyway), and enough body glitter to challenge the fucking sun. Even Avi gives him a low whistle of appreciation when he steps into the sphere.

 _Alright, world,_ he thinks, shooting Avi an all-teeth-grin. _Brace yourself._

The bar, one of Neverwinter’s younger establishments, is just as disgusting as he remembers; sticky cocktails and stickier floors, a flashy speaker system to make up for the abysmal state of the restrooms. At the front, a halfling DJ tries to seem lost in the music, but Taako can see him unsuccessfully trying to make eye contact with nearby groups of dancers. Whatever he’s thinking is going to impress them, it’s certainly not his bass drops.

The whole place reeks with body spray and vague sexual dissatisfaction. Lucky for Taako, it’s also exactly the right place to find a body he can disappear into.

Barely twenty minutes in, it’s clear it’s not worth the trouble. Not that there aren’t options—a half-giant with a plum-velvet laugh and hands like trashcan lids, a particularly zealous drow elf who licks his lips when he says he’s a fan of Taako’s _older work_ , whatever that means—who would give him pretty much anything he asked for, if he could focus on them for more than three seconds. Their lips move, and Taako picks up some semblance of vowels, but anything else is lost to white noise.

“I’m waiting for someone,” he lies to the drow elf (Dan, maybe? Delilah?) and sidles up to the bar, scanning the menu for whatever will get him fucked up fastest. Drinking till he can’t see straight sounds like much more fun anyway.

Except he does three shots before his stomach starts turning, and the strobe lights are only making his head buzz harder. Sleeping again wouldn’t be the worst thing. Bright side, at least Magnus and Merle are out for the evening, and he’ll have the time to get some real rest.

 

 

On the fifth day, Taako destroys.

He jerks awake from a sleep he doesn’t remember to find the cloak, which he’s sure he left on the wall the night before, draped over him again. He’s not even fucking hungover, but the light on the wall still feels invasive, bright as a Remorhaz and twice as rude.

 _Fuck you,_ he thinks, and sends a bolt of power to snuff it out, then ducks as the bulb pops with the force of it.

The restless itching in his head subsides for a second. Taako stares at the blanket, littered with a snowfall of glass, then at his hands. Somewhere just behind his sternum, a cord that’s been stretching since his and Lup’s talk draws tighter, tighter—and then it snaps.

Six crystal balls, all in brilliant colors, hurled with screamed curses to the floor so their shards cast misshapen kaleidoscopes on the walls. Pages ripped out of spellbooks and strewn across the room like confetti. Half his wands blown to dust, the other third snapped into kindling, mingled with strips of shredded designer shoes. Every piece of clothing that reminds him of someone, save a few things of Lup’s or Angus’s, joins the pile or gets Disintegrated on sight. He summons everything he remembers of evocation and channels it into bonfires around the room, and names each one for a different pain:

One for his uncle, the last relative to kick him and Lup out before they’d blown town completely;

One for Sazed, who’d given him everything and taken it away;

One for Johann, for Hurley, for Sloane, for Julia, for what’s-his-face back in Phandalin and Cam and Maureen Miller and everyone in all those worlds they couldn’t _fucking_ save;

One for him and Lup, for everything they didn’t get to have;

One for Lucretia. For everything else.

Fuck it. Fuck them, and fuck everyone who would defend them. Taako doesn’t need any of them, he’s fucking _good out here_ , he’d be so much better if everyone would just leave him alone. Fire cleanses. If it can rip through and fuck-all in its wake, so can he.

Whatever’s powering the anger, it feels so good that Taako doesn’t want to stop. Maybe he can’t, and it’s probably not good for him. But finally, fucking _finally_ , the world outside his head is starting to look like everything inside, all shredded and scorched and the acrid taste of being left behind that permeates every possible surface. This is his legacy.

As the self-contained bonfires send sparks cartwheeling around the room, he dances wildly, without music, and curses the names of everyone he burns away.

When it’s over, he surveys the smoldering wreckage of his room with a macabre sense of pride. This isn’t like him. He usually leaves the burn-it-down-and-salt-the-earth rages to Lup, but fuck, could be all he really needed to get himself right was a decent rager. Could be, come to think of it, that there’s a market for this—a service for recent breakups and kids of divorce, something like that, where some friendly schmuck shows up with a battle-axe and helped you make kindling of your bullshit. Magnus would be a decent schmuck for the job, and he’s got Railsplitter to boot.

He’s halfway to his desk, ready to jot down a half-formed business plan, when his eye catches on a dark shape in the corner. A tattered swath of black, half rags by now, but it seems more out of place than that. Even though it’s hard to make out what the thing used to be, he doesn’t remember ever buying anything this drab.

Taako reaches for it, frowning. At first, it just looks like dark wool, until he turns it over catches sight of the burgundy lining, the feathers. And then, faintly, under the smoke, the smell of cloves.

They say that that in a storm, even the most experienced sailor will keep clinging to his life rope after it’s been cut. Faith over fact, every time—even those that see it severed, the rope has always been the only surefire thing to guide them home. The lucky few whose bodies the ocean returns wash up still white-knuckling them, so steadfast in their convictions that the morgues break their fingers to get them loose.

Taako Takko, the most powerful wizard in living memory, stands in the wake of his own warpath, clutching a Reaper’s cloak with the empty faith of a drowning man. After a moment, he sags, then collapses as his knees buckle under him. And at last, he breaks.

 

 

The sobbing fit gives way to sleep, eventually, and Taako wakes at some ungodly hour, only to find himself suddenly and ravenously hungry. Which makes sense, actually, considering the shots were the first carbs he’s had in days. Food might be a smart move. Most of the bureau is passed out by now, so he doesn’t bother with a Cat’s Grace, just navigates the meandering halls to the kitchen.

Something feels off as he walks in, but it isn’t until he turns around that he sees it: a ghostly red robe, half-translucent by the window.

Most people, probably, would be terrified to walk in on a lich in their kitchen at three in the morning. Taako, of course, isn’t more people—or even most beings, for that matter—so it doesn’t phase him until Lup starts to talk.

“Taako.” Her voice is perfectly even: a cat poised on a fence, coiled like a spring. The final tick before an explosion.

Instinctively, he grabs the edge of the counter. He could make back to his room it if he Blinked, but Lup would probably fireball him before he even got the incantation out. So he raises a hand and says, with his best PR smile, “Lup! What can I do ya for?”

“Taako,” she repeats. “Do you want to know what happened to me at work today?”

It’s not really a question. “Do I?”

In the low candlelight above the stove, he can see one of Lup’s eyebrows flicker. She leans agains the stove and examines a skeletal fingernail, all perfectly practiced faux-casual. “Well, you know, Barrold and I rolled up a little early, we’re shooting the shit with a couple other reapers, and then Kravitz shows up. You remember Kravitz, right?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “And I ask him how he’s doing, and he says, _Lup, I think you should know that your brother and I have made the decision to terminate our relationship._ ”

He swallows hard. Shit, of course Lup would hear about it from Kravitz. He'd completely forgotten to tell her. “Oh, yeah, I meant to—"

“And I’m like, _that’s news to me, I thought you guys were really into each other_ , and he goes, _I guess things change_ , so I guess what I’m really getting at here, Taako, what my _real_ question is, is what in Istus’s name possessed you to _break my fucking boss?_ ”

When Taako was a kid, he liked to joke that the phrase “if looks could kill” was written for Lup. She’s always been a master of deadly smiles, and as she shakes her hood back to look at him properly, he finds himself in point-blank range. “‘Cause as far as I can remember, Taako, you called me four days ago to tell me how into this guy you were. So exactly what _things_ are we talking about here?”

She stares at him unblinking, which makes him wonder for a second whether liches have eyelids. He lets a few seconds pass, waiting for her to say something more. “Well?”

Taako crosses his arms. Lup can read him like a book, and the message is loud and clear: _I don’t want to talk about it._

Lup crosses hers back. _Too bad, asshole._

To anyone else, the conversation would be incomprehensible, but they know each other’s rhythms too well to stumble. Taako can do this dance backwards in heels. Actually did, once, that year he and Lup kicked everyone’s asses in the all-county under-eighty ballroom division back home.

He indicates his head toward the door. _I can just go._

A slight flick of her gaze, then she rolls her eyes. _You wouldn’t._ At her side, her wrist stiffens a degree, and he knows the threat, too: _try it and watch me burn this dump to the ground._

He opens his hands wide, a challenge: _Do it. I dare you._

She holds his gaze a second longer before huffing irritatedly, making her bangs fly haphazard off her face. “What is wrong with you? Did something happen with you guys?”

Taako can’t stand still any longer. He storms over to the sink, half-full from dinner, and starts scrubbing furiously at the remains of whatever protein monstrosity Avi made. “Nothing happened, Lulu. It’s just doneskies. Don’t get your bones in a twist.”

Even though he isn’t looking at her anymore, he can feel Lup bristle. “You are so—” she spits, voice stretched to a steel wire. “You’re shutting me out, Ko. You have been ever since—”

She stops without warning, and Taako finds himself gripping a fork so hard he’s afraid he might bend it. They both know what she didn’t say. _Since I got back._ And it’s true: try as he might, he and Lup can’t seem to mesh the way they did when they were kids. He’s doing the choreography, but they’ve forgotten how to move as a unit.

Taako takes another slow breath and tries to unclench his jaw. “It’s not. Your. Business.”

“What, my brother and my boss? Sounds like my business to me.”

He knows, on some level, that she’s trying to antagonize him. Lup always does this: she’ll push and push until you break and give her what she wants, and it always fucking works. Throwing the fork down, he spins to face her and snaps, “Yeah, okay, I fucking broke up with him. He was gonna break up with me. I did it first. End of story.”

“ _He was not going to_ —”

“Everybody leaves. It’s fine. It happens.”

The air around them smells of ozone, and he can feel Lup’s anger, the sparks flickering like dry lightning in her palms. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Ko. Gods, you’re always so fucking dramatic.”

“You did!”

“Yeah, because I was fucking _trapped in an Umbra staff_ , in case you’ve forgotten.”

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

Taako feels his heart skip a beat. His voice, hardly his own, comes out deadly sharp, and it’s like someone hit a stop button on the world. Lup freezes too, extinguishing the flame in her palm with a quick snap of her wrist. “Is this about Barry?”

 _Take it down a peg, Taako. Less murder-voice_. “It’s not.” For a little while, he’d thought it might be, but those two deserve all the love they can possibly get. “Lulu, I love you, and I love Barry, but once you two went all Skeletor, you kinda called it on us, you know? I couldn’t follow you there.”

Her cloak puckers sharply, as if he hit her. “That’s bullshit.” Fighting words, but he can already hear the doubt spiderwebbing through her voice. “You’re acting like I abandoned you.”

“That’s not it either!”

Irritation rises in her voice, an old defense mechanism. “Then don’t act like it!”

Fuck, no—this isn’t what he wants. They need to get on the same page, and fast. Taako waves desperately, trying to erase the last few minutes, and suds splatter the floor. “Okay, uh, wait. Let me start over. Remember that thing we used to say when we were kids?”

She frowns, momentarily distracted. “Rule one, no cops?”

“No, the other thing.”

One eyebrow creeps up her forehead. “Skies out thighs out.”

He raises one hand to his temple in frustration, gestures stiltedly, uselessly toward her. “No, just—fucking—it was you and me, Lup, and everybody else could get fucked, right? And, you know, the Starblaster and the mission and them, but you and me. After all this—” he waves at the cloak, conscious of how she shifts away from him—“it wasn’t you and me anymore. Adios and out the door. I was everybody else.”

Taako’s aware, suddenly, of the lump forming in his throat. He doesn’t remember giving it permission to do that. “I know it’s not true, but that’s still how it felt, Lu. Like you were just tired of me.”

At that, he hears her breath catch snag, and it throws him off-kilter. He’s pretty sure liches are too low in the whole bodily-fluids department to actually cry. But when he looks back at Lup, she has her lips pressed so hard together that the skin around them has turned white.

“Koko,” she whispers. The nickname pierces him just between the ribs. “I _never_ would have left you.”

His mouth opens, but he can’t answer.

“All the time in that stupid fucking staff, I was trying to get back to you. I wanted Barry and all the rest of them, but…”

Everything she’s saying is right. Exactly what he wanted to hear, and still, each word twists the knife in his chest a little more. He wonders if he’s being played. A trickster god, maybe? A mimic? Sick fucking joke, if it is, to go and conjure up some dream version of Lup who’s just as fucked-up as he is.

Vision-Lup presses the back of her hand against her mouth to stifle another shaky breath. “You’re my heart,” she says firmly. “And that’s that.”

Of course it’s a dream. Any second now, he’ll hear combat boots in the hall and the real Lup will catapult herself through this mirage, all light and life, and he’ll finally have her back.

“I tried, Ko, I fucking did, I didn’t know how to reach you.” Her voice cracks like a stone through a church window. Suddenly, he can hear what’s behind the anger, the crushing loneliness of those years she’s been trapped with her brother just a few inches away. “But—”

This was supposed to be healthy. This was supposed to be Taako getting his feelings off his chest, or some bullshit like that, and it doesn’t even matter whether this is a dream when Lup is starting to tremble and Taako doesn’t know what to do because he’s _hurting Lup, Lup is hurting and he’s the one doing it and this is why everyone leaves because all Taako can do when he loves someone is hurt them and he and Lup are beyond repair, no matter how much he tries to pretend he can’t forget the unforgivable thing and Lup can never know_

That terrible night in Lucretia’s chambers, the moment when Lup had come back to him. Before he’d ever known he would see her again. He’d thought of the gnawing void that had been eating him alive for the past ten years, the emptiness he couldn’t fill with al the fame and bad decisions in the world, of its incessant chant ( _I want I want I want_ ) just under his skin that hounded him relentless as his own shadow, and as his memories flooded in

_(I want)_

in the half-instant when the last piece slotted into place

_(I want)_

that emptiness howled its ruthless crescendo and clawed at his ankles but it was

_(I want)_

_gone_ as he broke the surface and gasped for air in a world of light and sound and he _knew_

_(I want Lup)_

And for that one, glorious instant, even as he remembered Lup was lost forever, he hadn’t been angry or sad. Not a bit. Taako had stood in front of the woman who took his sister away from him and felt nothing but relief.

“But I was _alone_ ,” Lup gasps, and lets out a death-rattle sob.

She drops to the floor in a cascade of scarlet. In a second, Taako’s beside her, throwing his arms around her and pressing his face into her hair. He’s aware that he’s saying something, just a desperate murmur of _love you sorry love you_ , whispered just as the tears he’s been holding back start to spill over.

No answer, but Lup clings to him just as fiercely. When he reaches for her hand, he finds hers already fumbling for his—muscle memory, the result of a century being each other’s only solid ground. A choreography etched into his bones.

A violent sob rips through him, which makes her cry harder, and for a while, that’s all they can do. Sit on the kitchen floor in bare-bones candlelight and mourn everything the world took from them.

Gods know Lup didn’t deserve any of it.

Maybe Taako didn’t either.

It’s not the same. There’s some things you can’t put back once they’re broken, and maybe he and Lup are like that, too far gone for anything to heal over completely. But Taako holds his sister closer as their breathing evens out, and she’s there. She came back.

They stay there, wrapped up in each other, until the feathered edges of dawn break through the window.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, writing this: boy howdy, i sure do have an interesting attachment to characters with abandonment issues! that's, uh, something, i should maybe look into...
> 
> yeah, for real, this was a little harder to write than i thought it would be. but it's out now, and the happy ending is half written, so we're absolutely getting there. any comments are super appreciated, as always!!
> 
> i'm always down to talk on [tumblr!](http://playing-for-keeps.tumblr.com/)


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I was, um. Scared.” He clears his throat. The feelings are there, but he can’t make words out of them. “Well, maybe _doubtful_ is the right word, or _apprehensive_ , I don’t know, ‘cha boy didn’t do so hot on his fantasy SAT vocab section—” the lines around Kravitz’s mouth get deeper—“or, no, yeah, I freaked out. I was having… emotions.”
> 
> “Emotions,” Kravitz repeats again.
> 
> “You know, like feelings. But bigger.”

When Lup leaves the next morning, she stops halfway out the door and pulls Taako into a hug that almost knocks the wind out of him. “Love you, Koko,” she mumbles into his crumpled robe. “More than anything.”

Taako hugs her back just as tight. “I know. You too.”

“Good.” Pulling back to smile at him, she brushes his hair back to give him a kiss on the forehead—and then, just for good measure, a wet willie.

He yelps and squirms away as she cackles maniacally. “Lulu! What the fuck?”

Her grin skews wicked. “Call your fucking boyfriend. Promise me.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

It’s obviously not very convincing. Lup rolls her eyes and, instead, sticks out her pinky. “ _Promise_ , Koko.”

He glares at her outstretched finger, the nail polished glittering black. “I really should’ve fed you to that giant duck in cycle sixty.”

“But you didn’t,” she sing-songs, and adds, because she knows it’ll make him smile, “and now you’re stuck with me for-e-ver.” Without warning, she reaches forward and grabs his hand, hooking his pinky through hers. “And _now_ , you have to.”

Before he has time to curse her out, she sends up a puff of smoke that leaves him coughing and swoops off. “You’re—” He hacks like a lawnmower starting up and calls in what he hopes is her direction, “ _You’re the worst person I’ve ever met!_ ”

No reply, and then just to his left, a small tear in the fabric of reality opens up. A skeletal hand with black polish where the nails should be pokes out to flip him off before blinking out of existence.

He stifles a laugh. Nice to know some things never change.

 

 

It still takes him almost two hours to call Kravitz. The whole time, he’s pacing up and down his room, mumbling nonsense excuses for not doing it, or sitting stock-still on his bed as the stone of farspeech judges him from the chest. This is ridiculous. All he has to do is pick up the stone, attune the frequency, and say…

And say what, exactly?

Middle-of-the-road answer: _Hey, Kravitz, remember those unresolved issues I definitely never told you about? Well, funny story…_

Asshole answer: _So, about the other day—any chance you’re down for round two, boychik? Need to make sure you get the full Taako experience._

Honest answer: _Hey, I love you._

And then Kravitz will hang up the stone, and Taako will never have to think about what they could have had again. Easy.

In the end, he still has no idea how it’s going to go when he inputs Kravitz’s frequency with shaking hands. The stone buzzes once, twice, three times, before abruptly shutting off mid-ring.

Shit. Kravitz must have seen his name and sent him to voicemail. Which means Taako is about to hear—

“Hi,” the stone says uncertainly. “You’ve reached Kravitz. I’m not available at the moment, but leave your name and I’ll, uh, get back to you? Taako, am I doing this right? Is it recording?” A few muffled thuds that sound like someone tapping on the stone. “Wait, no, stop flashing. Taako? Babe, can you help me with this?”

Laughter in the background, and Kravitz’s voice climbs in anxiety. “Okay, this is pointless. If you want to reach me, just, uh, die. Or do some illegal death stuff. That tends to help. Taako, stop _laughing_ at—”

The recording cuts off with a sudden pop, and Taako stares at the stone in a panic, mouth suddenly bone-dry. He’s got nothing. Even if he had something to begin with, the recording threw him for a loop. He still remember the afternoon he’d spent teasing Kravitz about his useless grasp of technology, and Kravitz’s protests that _ravens are still a perfectly good delivery system_ , as well as Taako’s helpless laughter as he watched Kravitz try to navigate the answering machine.

Which is still recording. “Oh, fuck me,” he blurts, and nearly drops the stone in the process. “Shit. Wait. Okay.” There’s already a tremor in his voice. “I was wondering if… or rather, if you wanted to… well, I mean, it’s me. Taako. You know, from TV?” _Idiot_. “I have your cloak,” he manages. “Call me if you want it back.”

He hangs up in a rush and squeezes the stone in disbelief. A fucking ransom call for a cloak. That’s what he could come up with. He’s one step from chucking it across the room when it flashes lilac. Taako picks up instantly, and hates the breathless desperation in his voice. “Kravitz?”

“Hello, Taako.”

All the breath rushes out of Taako’s body. Kravitz sounds steely and taut, not a trace of emotion in his voice. No _hey, love_ anymore. “You left me a message.”

“Did you listen to it? I have your cloak.”

A heavy sigh on Kravitz’s end. “I know you do.”

“So do you need to, uh, come get it?” Fingers crossed.

He hears Kravitz sigh again, and a little static comes through the line as if he’s shifting in his seat. “Can’t you just send it with Lup? I’m sure she’d take it.”

“Actually…” He swallows heavily, bracing himself. “I can’t. You have to come here and get it.”

“Why?”

The silence that follows is so cloying that Taako can feel it seeping into his pores. That, he actually can’t answer. There’s no real reason for Kravitz to come to him—Taako had assumed, on some level, that Kravitz would still come when he called.

Kravitz crackles through, irritated. “Well?”

“I want to, um.” _Apologize._ He starts to say it, but the word sticks in his throat like a dry-swallowed pill, and it’s all he can do not to choke on it. “Talk.”

“And what do you think we have to talk about?”

“Well, ‘cha boy done goofed. So I figured we could hash it out, you know, have a rap sesh, and we’ll end things on a good note.” Even as he’s saying it, Taako can feel himself cringing. “No harm no foul. You in?”

This time, he can hear the dash of pain coloring Kravitz’s voice, and it sends a jolt straight to the base of his spine. “It wasn’t a goof, Taako. You hurt me. You don’t get to decide you didn’t.”

“I—” He cuts himself off, because he was going to say _I didn’t mean to_ , and it was a fucking delusion to think he could keep that up. “I want—”

Taako’s never been particularly brave. Impulsive, sure, and sometimes testy, but he’s always been happy to sit back and let Lup be the courageous one. It wouldn’t be brave to hang up right now and pretend this never happened, and it would sure as hell be easier than this.

But then he remembers Lup’s face when she jumped out of the tank again. She’d been practically incandescent when she saw Barry for the first time. And Taako might be safe, but Lup? She’s _happy_. If there’s even a chance he could have that, then maybe Taako can be brave too.

“I want to apologize,” he whispers. The words suck all the air out of the room, hang like wet burlap on the line between them, but they’re out there. “Please.”

After a long, breathless pause, the reply comes through. “Alright.”

 

 

They agree that Kravitz will portal over at four, which gives Taako an extra few hours to panic over how to fix the burnt cloak. In between the hours he spends curled on his bed in anxiety fits, he gets a few of the scorch marks off, but most of it stays pretty destroyed, which should be fun to explain.

Just as the clock strikes four, there’s a noise in the hall like a seam ripping in space. Taako yanks open the door before Kravitz is even fully out. Most of the rubble in his room is gone, but he still shuts it tight behind him, just in case. When Kravitz turns to him, skin raveling over his skull, Taako’s shoulders relax for what feels like the first time in weeks.

There’s something poetic, maybe, in the fact that he’s lived over a hundred lifetimes and Death is still the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. Or something.

“Oh!” Kravitz can’t even hide the flash of surprise on his face. “You look, uh…”

“Fabulous?” Taako grins bleakly. He didn’t bother with the glamour, and he knows he looks even worse than usual: eye bags, hollow face, the whole shebang. “Yeah, I’m on a, uh, new cleanse. Full detox, actually, involves giving up gluten, dairy, sugar, sleep—y’know, the usual. Highly recommended by Fantasy Cosmo, and let me tell you my digestion has been _primo_ lately—”

Kravitz cuts off his ramble. “Taako. Why’d you ask me here?”

Right. Yes. Almost forgot that part, that having a talk with Kravitz meant actually _talking_ to Kravitz. Fuck, why didn’t he write notecards for this? He starts to pick at a loose thread on his sleeve, thinks better of it, and leans back against the door with his arms folded. Then he rearranges himself into a more attractive pose, just in case. He’s a mess, but he’s not an animal.

During the entire performance, Kravitz watches him without a word. When it becomes evident that Taako isn't going to talk, he sighs, holding out a hand to summon his scythe. “Look, if you don’t have anything to say, I should go. I’ll get my cloak another time.”

He raises the scythe, ready to conjure a tear, and panic, raw and primal, seizes Taako’s guts. If Kravitz leaves now, it’ll be really leaving, and Taako can’t let that happen, not after it took so much to get him here.

“I was scared,” he blurts, before he can even think it through.

That does the trick. The scythe dissipates as Kravitz turns back and takes in Taako, who claps both his hands over his mouth. Almost imperceptibly, Kravitz’s eyes narrow. “Scared.”

Hoo boy. Big old can of worms he just opened there. “I was, um. Scared.” He clears his throat. The feelings are there, but he can’t make words out of them. “Well, maybe _doubtful_ is the right word, or _apprehensive_ , I don’t know, ‘cha boy didn’t do so hot on his fantasy SAT vocab section—” the lines around Kravitz’s mouth get deeper—“or, no, yeah, I freaked out. I was having… emotions.”

“Emotions,” Kravitz repeats again.

“You know, like feelings. But bigger.”

The look on Kravitz’s face, like he’s trying to parse out exactly what wrong decisions brought him to this exact moment, make Taako want to crawl inside his pocket spa and die. A long, terrifying few seconds pass before he asks, stiltedly, “Were these… good emotions?”

“They were unexpected,” he says evasively, which isn’t an answer but sounds enough like one that it might count.

This time, Kravitz stays lost in thought for so long that Taako has to quash the urge to break the tension by setting something on fire. Possibly himself. When he finally speaks, his tone is painfully awkward. “Do these emotions have anything to do with the conversation we had about, um. About cheese?”

Taako winces. Of course he remembers that. Stupid fucking Kravitz, with his stupid fucking displays of caring. Why couldn’t he just be a dick about this like a normal person? “It might.”

“And the fact that I told you that—”

“Doesn’t change anything,” Taako cuts him off. “Look, I’m sorry about that, really I am, but it’s not something I can really change, so it’s better for both of us to just cut this off before we both get in too deep.”

Silence. Kravitz shifts from foot to foot, hands shoved deep in his pockets. The itching begins to buzz at Taako’s temples again. He wants Kravitz to fight back, to yell at him—anything to make this easier. “Look,” he spits, and Kravitz’s head snaps up. “You obviously want to say something to me, so either fucking say it or split. Capisce?”

“You _asked_ me here.”

“And you showed up! So what is it? Use your fucking mouth-words!”

“I _can’t_ —” Kravitz’s eyes flash red for half a second, but he pinches the bridge of his nose and continues. “I can’t ask you what I want to ask you if you keep dancing around all my questions, Taako.”

Taako grits his teeth. “Then ask better questions.”

The second it’s out of his mouth, he regrets it. That’s—fuck. That was mean. He half-expects Kravitz to just turn and go, but the reaper stays put. “I didn’t come here to fight with you.”

“Great.” Still harsh. He wills himself to breathe slower. “I would also prefer. To not do that. I mean, I don’t want to fight with you.” Better, but not by much.

“That’s a start.”

“Great,” he repeats. Breathe in. “So, is there something you want to tell me?”

“There is, but I—Taako, I need you to be straight with me for a second.”

“Not my forte, compadre.”

Briefly, Kravitz looks like he regrets waiving Taako’s death warrant. He sets his jaw. “Honest. Can you promise you’ll be honest with me?”

There’s pain in Kravitz’s voice. Pain in his eyes, too, sharp and fragmented as Lup’s, and now Taako can hear her voice in the kitchen as she started to fall apart. And fuck, isn’t it just like Taako to take someone he loves and twist them till they break? The buzzing in his head grows louder, and he can feel his walls going up, wants to sink down behind them and never come out.

No. Taako’s being brave today. He owes Kravitz this much, at least. “You got it, pal. Honesty hour with Taako, coming right your way.”

He grins, getting a twitch of a smile in return as Kravitz finally looks at him properly. Which, _he_ llo, Taako forgot how intense the reaper’s full attention was. It’s not sexy, but it’s kind of sexy. “Did you leave me that note because you thought I was going to abandon you?”

A strangled little laugh bursts from Taako’s throat. “Boy howdy, you really, uh, jumped right in there, didn’t you? Didn’t want a warm-up question first?”

“Taako.”

“No, yeah, okay.” Is there a problem with the Bureau airlocks? It would explain the sudden tightness in Taako’s chest. He focuses hard on the spot right between Kravitz’s eyes. “Yeah, I did.”

“Okay.” On the surface, he looks perfectly contained, but Taako can see a defeated slump in his shoulders. His words barely qualify as a whisper. “Do you love me?”

He opens his mouth. The words wrap themselves around his tongue and pull it back, crawl through his lips to sew them shut. Instead, he nods once, jerkily.

Kravitz stiffens all over. His voice snags like an unravelling sweater, a thread from total collapse. “So why not?”

In this light, the cloudy red of his eyes is too much for Taako to handle. He presses both hands over his face, biting the inside of his lip to avoid breaking. “I couldn’t stand you leaving,” he admits on a shaky exhale, “and you would. Doesn’t matter what you say now. So we can’t.”

For a second, Kravitz seems like he’s about to say something, but it might just be Taako’s imagination. Between them, the silence stagnates the hall.

Taako turns back to the door, trying to ignore how difficult it’s becoming to swallow. “I’ll, uh, grab your cloak.” It would be way too much to let Kravitz see him cry right now. All he has to do is hold it together long enough to return the cloak, and then he’s allowed to break down again. “Fair warning, it might be a little singed, had a fireball accident.” Just another few seconds. If the lock would just fucking _turn_ —

“Taako, wait.”

He stops short. Kravitz is holding one hand out to him, some dying spark reignited on his face. “I don't know how to tell you so you’ll believe me.” He swallows. Taako could lose himself in the long line of his throat. “But would you let me show you?”

Taako clasps his own hands in front of him, mostly to hide the fact that they’re shaking. All he has to do is say no and they won’t drag this out any longer than they have already.

Then again, what have they got to lose?

Leaning against the door again, he arches an eyebrow and drawls, “Depends how much bodily harm is involved, homie. I don’t think the Bureau even gives us dental.”

“Nothing like that.” Kravitz allows himself a soft laugh at that. “Do you have any spell slots left?”

He pushes his hair back, and Taako almost—it wouldn’t hurt to touch his face just once, right? He clenches his fists instead. “One.”

“Cast detect thoughts on me.”

“Krav, the fuck?”

Instinctively, Taako takes half a step back, caught off-guard, but Kravitz grabs hold of his hand and presses it to his chest, just where his heart used to beat. “Just do it, okay? I won’t try to resist. You’ll see what I mean.”

As he gathers what’s left of his magic, feeling it fizz just under his fingertips, he indicates his head toward their hands, still intertwined on Kravitz’s chest. “You know this spell doesn’t need contact?”

Kravitz’s smile twists into a grimace. “I know. That’s for me.”

But before Taako can even ask what the fuck that’s supposed to mean, the spell takes hold, and they’re both plunged into darkness.

 

 

His first thought is that Kravitz must have cast some kind of enhancement, because the thoughts he reads are never immersive. That train of thought runs right off the tracks, though, because that’s when the pain hits.

In half a second, his vision whites out, burning from every angle. The substance he’s drowning in—the hunger, but he doesn’t know how he knows that— sears his skin and rends flesh from bone, and at the same time it’s _inside_ him, crawling down his throat and filling up his lungs and pulsing with malicious life, and even though it’s white-hot he’s still so, so cold.

Is he screaming? He’s not sure, or even if he remembers how. The only clear noises are the whispers from every direction: _going to die here_

 _Stop it please make it stop please I’ll do anything just make it stop oh gods I’m scared it hurts it hurts it_ hurts

The substance laughs. He can _feel_ it laugh. It sends itself vibrating through his veins, plucking at his organs with finely tuned tendrils. Outside, a billion white eyes watch the performance unperturbed.

Die here? Wasn’t he already dead? Maybe, but this time he can feel the finality of the thing. Not death. Beyond that. The end of existence.

 _Please stop I’m scared it_ hurts _I want my mother I want to go let me go please_

 _give up_ , urge the whispers. _give in_

 _Make it stop,_ he begs.

_let go_

It would be so easy. What’s left of his mind is already smudging into watercolor oblivion. Another few seconds, and it’ll all be over, and he can rest, and he’s so, so tired—

And then somewhere, in the back of his mind, a voice. A low laugh that, after a moment, Taako realizes is his own. _Yeah,_   _you’ll definitely be seeing me again, for sure._

Another, softer reply, with just a note of a smile: _Well, if that's the case, then hopefully not too soon. Goodbye, Taako._

_Adios!_

It hits him then, a thought so simple he doesn’t know how he didn’t remember before. This is ridiculous. Of course he can’t die here. He has a date.

Sending up a prayer to all the gods he believes in—and a few he doesn’t—he reaches out into the blackness, gasping for a second at the needle-pricks that meet him there. There’s nothing, and for a moment he feels like giving up again, but his fingers stretch further and beyond, and then just _there_ , close around the handle of his scythe.

_won’t make it_

But there’s already more power running through him. Not much, but just enough, maybe, to get him to the surface.

He summons up the voice again, focuses on the last, fleeting tether of memory, and swims for home.

 

 

The vision cuts out, and Taako comes to. He doesn’t remember his knees buckling under him, but they must have; there’s a steadying hand on his waist holding him up. Kravitz look like he’s on the verge of collapsing too. He whispers, “Did you see?”

 _Yeah,_ Taako wants to say, _I was right. You even looked hot with all that gunk on you._ But it doesn’t come out like that. Instead, his breath catches as he says, “You heard me.”

“You brought me back.” The hand that’s holding Taako’s to his heart starts to tremble. “Taako, as long as you want me here, I will always come back to you. Gods, I was going crazy over there worrying about you—I didn’t know if you were safe, or if you’d forgotten about me, but I _had_ to come back to you.” At his waist, Kravitz’s other hand rubs indistinguishable patterns into the hem of Taako’s shirt. “You’re just… I mean, I really think you might be it for me.”

He might as well have dropped a bomb. Kravitz’s fingers freeze like he can grab the statement back, and Taako feels his whole body jerk back as if he’s been shoved. “I’m sorry,” Kravitz blurts. “I didn’t meant to scare you—“

Kravitz’s words, his hands, the way he’s looking at Taako: he can feel it, bubbling in the pit of his stomach, the strange, aching happiness he’s been trying to hold off. This is the most romantic gesture anyone’s ever made for him, in this lifetime or a hundred others.

But it’s just that. A gesture. And Taako has seen enough of those to know that that isn’t enough to last.

On autopilot, his mouth starts going before his brain has time to catch up. “Really, you should get going,” he blurts, gesturing toward the door without stepping back. Kravitz’s shoulders actually jolt, like he’s taken a magic missile straight to the chest. “You probably have work, I don’t want to keep you.”

“I don’t, actually.”

Yet another pause—they’re really doing well on those today—but this time, Kravitz actually looks away. Taako frowns. “You always have work.”

“I, um.” The reaper stares resolutely at the floor just to Taako’s left. “I rearranged my schedule. There’s a few hours a day I block off in case you need me.”

If Kravitz had a pulse, it would be high as a hummingbird’s. There’s no way he can’t feel Taako’s thrumming against his fingers. “You rearranged your schedule,” he repeats. Kravitz’s schedule. His elaborate, color-coded, centuries-in-the-making schedule, the one with the events of the day listed alphabetically _and_ chronologically. “You. Rearranged your schedule.”

“Yeah.”

“You told me you hadn’t done that in nineteen years.”

“Eighteen years, six months, four days, five and a half hours. Give or take. The documents went through a month ago.” He bites the inside of his cheek (a bad habit from his mortal childhood, and _where_ did Taako learn that) and twists his mouth into something approximating a smile. “I don’t do it often. Only when it’s necessary.”

What he means, and what Taako knows he means, is _only when it’ll last._

Now, of course, a normal person would say something romantic in return. Taako has never been particularly normal. “Ain’t that the way it fucking goes,” he bursts out. “You cross dimensions to get back here and it’s a _scheduling conflict_ that does it for me.”

“What?” But Kravitz doesn’t get another word in, because that’s when Taako lunges forward to lock both arms around his neck, yanking him down the last few inches to kiss him. Or at least, he tries; Kravitz makes a noise somewhere between an alarmed grunt and a moan against Taako’s mouth before pulling back. “I’m sorry,” he manages, blowing a strand of Taako’s hair aside, “what changed?”

“Look, if you’re all in, like really _all in,_ I’m all in. For real. Let’s do this.” There’s a wild strand of hope running through his voice that he’s never heard before, one that skates the knife-edge of manic. He hopes Kravitz hears it too.

Kravitz’s mouth opens and closes uselessly a few times. “Taako,” he manages, a little strangled, “Not that I don’t want—” he waves between them, eyes fixed on Taako’s mouth—“this, but I really don’t understand anything that happened in the last fifteen seconds, and if this is just an impulse for you, I can’t…”

He trails off. It hits Taako then, the crucial part he’s been missing here. Kravitz is terrified. Behind all his over-attentive eager-to-please, there’s the same caged-animal whisper that made its home in Taako’s chest years ago: _don’t leave me. Please, don’t leave me._

Taako’s hurt a lot of people to keep that whisper quiet. He thinks about Lup, about being brave. About happy.

Slowly, he runs his hands up Kravitz’s chest, stopping to trace the line of his jaw. Under his fingers, the reaper takes a sharp and unnecessary breath. “I’m not gonna be that good at any of this,” he mumbles. “Well, sex aside. I’m great at that, natch. The rest of it, ‘cha boy’s a little new to this, but I want to try. With you. If it’s cool.”

As Taako watches, heart in his mouth, Kravitz’s eyebrows pull together for a moment in thought. Finally, he nods. “Neat.”

“ _Neat? _”__ Taako begins, incredulous. He’s about to go on when Kravitz kisses him for real, which—he can’t remember the last time he was kissed breathless, not in a hundred years or more. His hands move of their own accord to cradle Kravitz’s cheeks, and. Well. Taako may have tangled with a priceless artifact or two, but he’s never touched anything that felt even close to this precious.

“Technically,” Kravitz says, pulling back without warning, “it’s not a scheduling conflict. It’s a calendar shift. Sounds small, but it makes a huge difference in paperwork.”

When Taako stares at him in disbelief, he shrugs. “A conflict, I can just go through HR. A full shift, though, that’s a week’s worth of notice at least, plus four forms filled out in triplicate, and the J-460s are a real pain in the ass.”

Really, how in Istus’ name is this the person he chose to love? Taako shakes his head. “You know, I really don’t know how there was _ever_ a time I thought you were smooth. How’d you pull that off for so long, my dude?”

Kravitz shrugs again. “You didn’t let me talk for very long?”

“Yeah, that was the right call.” Suddenly, Taako is very aware that Kravitz’s hand is still on his waist. As soon as he glances at it, Kravitz starts to move it away, but Taako catches it before he can. “But if you wanted, you could come in and not talk for a while right now. If you’re not busy. Which I know you’re not.”

He steps back, pushing the door open a crack, and pointedly doesn’t mention the implication: _I trust you in my space _.__ Kravitz’s eyes flicker to the open door, but instead of taking the offer, his fingers tense a little where they’ve worked their way under his shirt. “Look, Taako, not that it’s not a very, uh, welcome offer, and obviously we’ve both had a lot of emotions this week, but…”

“But what?”

“Don’t feel like you owe me anything, yeah? I don’t want you to beat yourself up over this.”

Taako straightens up, and waves a hand glibly, vanishing the stains from his robe and arranging his hair. “I will _definitely_ continue to do exactly that, and we can _absolutely_ discuss that later.” When Kravitz opens his mouth to argue, Taako covers it. “But listen, babe, I’ve had more than enough feelings for today, so if you don’t mind, I’d really like to go do whatever the romantic equivalent of fucking you senseless is. All cool?”

“I think that’s called—”

“Pal, if you even consider finishing that sentence, I will blast your ass from from here to fucking Refuge.”

A ridiculous, goofy grin splits Kravitz’s face. This time, Taako finds himself mirroring it. “Actually, I think ‘blast your ass’ is the romantic term you were looking for, but if you’d rather, I can go.”

Instead off answering, Taako grabs his tie and pulls him down again. The kiss is messy at best, since they’re both smiling too hard to really commit to it, but it might be the best of his life. He pulls Kravitz into his room, loving the bright laugh that thrums against his fingers as they stumble over the step, and finds the frenzied desperation of the last time gone. They move together now as a summer storm, hazy, heady, utterly overwhelming.

And something else happens, just between Kravitz’s lips on Taako’s neck and Taako’s fingers digging into Kravitz’s shoulder blades. A shift, just small enough that you’d have to squint to look for it, but definite:

Forever starts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> holy shit, guys, this is the longest thing i've written in a WHILE. again, this started as a warmup/experiment that got away from me a little, and it was a little scarier to write than i thought it would be. that said, this is a happy-endings-only zone and i deliver as promised. also not super proofread since it's god-knows-when in the morning, so edits might happen.
> 
> but for real, you guys have been incredible?? thank you so much for reading and commenting. i'm kinda new to TAZ (just finished balance last month, actually), and the feedback on this was unreal. special thanks to everyone who commented, since y'all made this whole process a little less terrifying. written while listening to a lot of florence and the machine at two in the morning.
> 
> thanks a million, guys.

**Author's Note:**

> this... was supposed to be a warm-up. it was supposed to be a thousand words to get me started for an assignment. i have no idea what happened in between then and now but the full thing is rapidly approaching 12k, so i guess i write taz now. also, i'm posting this on day four without sleep. hopefully next chapter by sunday.
> 
> next time: taako rolls a nat one, lup is really fucking done, and feelings? not exactly fun.
> 
> work title from hunger by florence and the machine, which is objectively The Most Taakitz Song. thanks for reading!!
> 
> edit: oh, come find me on [tumblr](http://playing-for-keeps.tumblr.com/)!!


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